166 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



Passive virtues, of all others the severest and 

 the most sublime ; of all others, perhaps, the most 

 acceptable to the Deity, — would, it is evident, be 

 excluded from a constitution in which happiness 

 and misery regularly followed virtue and vice. 

 Patience and composure under distress, affliction, 

 and pain; a steadfast keeping up of our confidence 

 in God, and of our reliance upon his final goodness, 

 at the time when every thing present is adverse 

 and discouraging ; and (what is no less difficult 

 to retain,) a cordial desire for the happiness of 

 others, even when we are deprived of our own ; 

 these dispositions, which constitute, perhaps, the 

 perfection of our moral nature, would not have 

 found their proper office and object in a state of 

 avowed retribution ; and in which, consequently, 

 endurance of evil would be only submission to 

 punishment. 



Again : one man's sufferings may be another 

 man's trial. The family of a sick parent is a 

 school of filial piety. The charities of domestic 

 life, and not only these, but all the social virtues, 

 are called out by distress. But then misery, to be 

 the proper object of mitigation, or of that benevo- 

 lence which endeavours to relieve, must be really 

 or apparently casual. It is upon such sufferings 

 alone that benevolence can operate. For were 

 there no evils in the world but what were punish- 

 ments, properly and intelligibly such, benevolence 

 would only stand in the way of justice. Such 

 evils, consistently with the administration of moral 



